WHAT THE TREES SAID

Sunday afternoon. Sitting on the patio with a fresh cup of coffee in the Elephant mug I love, looking at the Eucalyptus trees that invited me to buy this house in 1981. These trees are threatened in Topanga, CA because they ignite, spark and burn hot and so many locals wish them cut down. Since I moved here, the original trees have self-seeded and what was a single line is on its way to being a grove.

I am looking up at the tree nearest the house which planted itself in the 90s. Pami Ozaki named her Gumby. As you can see, her branches begin rather high compared to the others and there is a prominent bend away from the house in her trunk.

Gumby

This is how it occurred: When I saw her grow and lean toward the kitchen, I was alarmed; I couldn’t cut her down but the Fire Department might demand it. So, I spoke to her and conveyed the dilemma we were in and begged her to change her posture. She did! The same with the self-seeded Pine behind the house who in response to our situation, began, subtly, but notably, listing toward the east, away from the structures.

My first request that the trees accommodate to the fire dangers that have come with our creation of global warming leading to climate dissolution, came out of fear. But this morning, I’m aware that I have spent more than forty years protecting these trees as best I can and that my motivation is love. They have responded in kind in their own ways. (Raven, who lives on the land, has just begun cawing.)

It is essential to understand that the trees’ response reveals agency. My love, their recognition of it and their undeniable physical response: interconnection and interaction.

Almost every newsletter and announcement over the web in the last weeks has emphasized the dire conditions we are facing. The fires and floods are so extreme everywhere that it isn’t possible to turn away from the signs of global catastrophe from flooding in Beijing to devastating fires in Maui, from winter temperatures in the 100s in Argentina to the uncontainable wildfires in Canada. We needed to change our lives, our lifestyles, our dependency on ‘power’ in all its forms, our enchantment with everything extraction industries and fossil fuels offer – these gross violations of the bodies and presence of the ancestors – and we didn’t.

It’s not that we haven’t known what to do but perhaps we haven’t known how to do it.

Over the last years, it has become wildly obvious to me that all survival depends on alliances with the natural world.

How is that possible? we ask.
Because the natural world has agency!

A kindly reminder was the communication this morning from the Eucalyptus trees. They suggested I read portions of the Introduction to Intimate Nature: The Bond Between Women and Animals, which I edited in 1998 with Linda Hogan and Brenda Peterson. Once assembled, the evidence of all the contributions was that animals have agency. (As I write these lines, Raven has found me in my studio and begun a water trill that sounds like a love call, it is so beautiful).

From Intimate Nature:

“We have also lived with animals as cocreators of this world.”

“In recent years, according to Earth-time, humans have lost their more intimate relationships with animals as peers, teachers and kindred allies….

“These writers and researchers together, together with those ancient indigenous intellectual and religious traditions, began to mend what has been broken by a system of careless thought. They increased our awareness of the physical and spiritual relationship we need to establish with the earth, teaching us we are woven together with the rest of the world equally and beautifully….

“At the center of empathy and compassionate understanding lies the ability to see the other as true peers, to recognize intelligence and communication in all forms, no matter how unlike ourselves these forms might be.

“The animals are speaking to us, through us and with us. They are coming to us not only in our dreams but in our lives.”

I have considered the probability of agency for more than forty years since I came in the middle of a storm up a narrow muddy dirt road to a veritable shack with plumbing but without running water that was being sold for a fortune I didn’t have, and the trees said, “Live here,” and I listened. Grateful.

Eucalyptus on the Patio

The sun is setting and the green leaves are momentarily golden and aglow. Conscious of the extreme heat and the waves of fire across the globe, and that we are the cause, the Trees may be reminding us of their deep knowing and awareness so we will understand who is burning when they burn.

Please consider that we may be able to save our lives and the planet by restoring true relationships and alliances with the beings of the natural world, by recognizing their wisdom and agency, and then living accordingly.

Exploring how we might re-enter the original relationships with the natural world which our far ancestors lived will be a primary focus for the 19 Ways. In this we will all, likely, be new to the work.